


words alone are vain and vacant (and my heart is mute)

by SixPonderous



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, Pablo Neruda worship, Smoking, They also get a cat, alternative universe, poet AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 13:44:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10537692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SixPonderous/pseuds/SixPonderous
Summary: Pep is a poet. Jose is his editor and translator.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aliccolo (guti)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/guti/gifts).



> Thank you so much to blindbatalex, thesecretdetectivecollection and gutilicious for being super helpful! Ali, I hope you like it. There will be more with the cat, I swear.
> 
> All poems mentioned are the work of Pablo Neruda, I do not own them. The English translation is done by Ben Belitt.
> 
> (I'm totally not procrastinating my Spring Fling fic. At all.)

**()**

When Jose Mourinho graduated university, he wanted to be a writer. His lone work, a novel that took four years to write, was considered by editors to be unpalatably angry and arrogant and went unpublished and wouldn’t ever see the light of day. Jose disagreed with arrogant, but looking back on it years later it was a bit angry.

Editing suited him better anyway—he had a keen eye for detail, continuity, and language. He managed to impress Ferguson enough to become a main editor and a translator and to mostly make his own appointments. 

Josep Guardiola was a master of language. Jose probably would have hated him ten years ago.

The Catalan Spaniard’s work was making rounds in various publications like _The New Yorker_ and the like, so Jose naturally had heard of him.

“I despise convention,” Pep murmured, his voice soft like a light dusting of snow in the stuffy office during their first meeting. Admittedly had too much on his plate to have could do anything other than a cursory once-over on his chapbook, submitted primly to the firm in the hopes of being published. Jose lost count of the number of writers who said the same thing and tried not to roll his eyes.

So many idealists.

Pep pulled a cigarette and a chunky metal lighter out of his breast pocket and lit it without asking. Jose’s interest was piqued, despite himself and raised his eyebrows disdainfully. Pep ignored him.

“Many poets, I think, are outlandish. As if the larger than life it is, the more essential to the human condition it is. Breaking conventional grammar and meter just for purposeless fun. No.” He took a drag and exhaled through his nose, looking Jose right in the eye. “Writing is worshipping words and how fun it is to play, to experiment with purpose. To get political. Sexual.”

Jose hummed, making a note to himself on the back of the book. If he was a writer, he would have personally noted the sharpness and severity of Pep’s words with the even, almost gentle cadence of his voice. The contrast was almost lovely.

“You can think pretty of yourself all that you’d like. What matters is good writing and marketable writing.”

“Obviously.”

“Besides,” Jose continued. “Death of the poet, and all the lovely postmodern conventions. No one cares anymore who you or I are. You’re quite self-righteous.”

Pep smirked. Jose’s eyes dropped to the curve of his lips, the cigarette dipping against them. He tapped away the ash onto the floor. What a bastard.

“I am aware of my talents. There’s no need to be falsely modest. With all this social media, there’s no spiritual death of anything anymore. Camus would be devastated.”

Jose grinned and leaned back in his desk chair. “Anything else?”

Pep stubbed the cigarette on his own briefcase, half finished, and tucked it back in the box. “I’d prefer your call by the end of the week. I don’t like waiting.”

Jose couldn’t help but laugh, rolling his eyes. “Deal, Josep Guardiola. End of the week.”

Pep’s dark eyes glittered with amusement and he nodded once. “Until then, Jose Mourinho.”

Jose had rules that he liked to adhere to. One of which was not entertaining the whims of the writers, because almost always, the whims of writers were ridiculous. Despite himself, Jose gave the short chapbook more than a courteous cursory glance while he was still working.

 _… Great sunstone, unflawed in the zones_  
_of the world, Spain threaded_  
_by bloods and by metals, triumphant and blue,_  
_proletariat of petals and bullets whom nothing repeats in the_  
_world:_  
_sonorous, somnolent, living._

Damn him.

He called Pep that night (at an inconvenient time, he wasn’t the only one who could be petty), and told him to fax the full book by morning. This handsome, arrogant Spaniard could win the Nobel Prize or something one day and he would be the biggest idiot on earth to pass him up.

**()**

Pep looked up to see Jose placing his overcoat on the back of the chair across from his.

“Coffee?”

“Quadruple espresso. Thank you.” He placed the cigarette between his lips again and took out his notebook. He could feel Jose’s judgmental eyes and patiently ignored him.

He watched the curls of smoke unfold around him when Jose interrupted him again. “Your mudwater.”

Pep smirked and looked at his editor’s latte. “That looks unpalatable.”

“Good thing you’re not drinking it, then.” Jose giggled once before clearing his throat and sitting up straight. Pep mirrored him. All business.

“Thank you,” Pep began genuinely. “For your call. Even if it was… late.”

Jose dug in his coat pocket for his readers and slid them up his nose. He gave Pep a levelled look.

“Oh, it’s the least I can do for smoking in my office. My boss almost had a conniption fit.”

Pep shrugged and repressed his amusement that he also clearly saw reflected in Jose’s eyes. “Your reputation precedes you. You are good at what you do. Maybe the best at what you do, and as such you are very difficult to impress. I needed a smoke, and a memorable impression should my work not speak for itself.”

“You know, there _is_ such a thing as a bad first impression. Smoking in my office, for one.”

Pep raised his hands in mock-defeat. “And yet, here we are.” Jose laughed at that and raised his latte mug like a beer glass. An agreement.

**()**

They developed a system, a schedule and a routine quickly.

Jose did work for his other writers during the mornings until lunch. Lunch was at Pep’s flat, which after deadlines meant cooked food, close to deadlines meant take-out or vitamin supplements only. At five, Jose might head home to spend the night translating. He might, also, take Pep’s offer to stay and watch football on his laptop. They fought over football like they fought over literature, and yet, Jose would arrive at the flat on Saturdays for game day despite not working on Saturdays.

The Catalan man was unsurprisingly riveted by his native Barcelona, waxed poetic about her history and her noble players. Jose figured there was never going to be a good time to tell Pep that he was very much partial to the rival Madrid side, so he never mentioned it. A big part of his job was to keep Pep happy and keep him writing.

Pep suspected though, since Jose was evidently _not_ a fan of the beautiful tikitaka.

Pep frequently left notes taped in strange places. Sometimes they were lines of poetry. Other times, they were simple demands.

“Need pinto beans”

“Salvador Puig i Antich collection of letters or anything just find it you’re good at that”

“ _come into my soul dressed in white like a branch of blood roses like a chalice of ashes._ yes or no to chalice of ashes, the rest non-negotiable”

“Detergent. Will pay you back”

If Jose didn’t take things in stride, he wouldn’t be a good editor. He brought detergent back to the Guardiola residence (an absurdly small apartment, crammed with books and loose papers. There was a kitchenette, a bathroom and a bed in there, somewhere. A true bachelor’s pad with the features of a once-starving writer.)

“I want to write about football,” Pep said, distracted. Jose could hear the rhythmic tapping of a pen against his thigh from the other room.  

It was best to take notes at the exact moment Pep’s thoughts sped to a thousand kilometers an hour so Jose didn’t get left behind. “Football?” he prompted, coming back to sit beside him on the couch, pen in hand.

“Yes. The beautiful game. Here’s what I’m thinking.” Pep flicked his lighter and lit up. “A love story.”

Jose dutifully took notes, marking question marks and exclamation points on the paper instead of letting Pep know his opinions as he brainstormed. For one, it wasn’t his place, and Pep came up with brilliance all on his own. He asked objective questions when necessary, and Pep either responded with a long tangent or a simple “I don’t know.” If he hadn’t thought of anything.

Pep relied on Jose’s consistency, knowledge. Jose relied on Pep’s unbridled brilliance. There was a balance in there, somewhere. The very next morning, he offloaded book upon book onto Pep’s desk.

Once, Jose woke up in the middle of the night on Pep’s couch, drunk. Two bottles of red wine were empty on the coffee table that was smattered in papers, reference books, and dictionaries. He was still in his dress shirt and slacks, now creased to hell. Pep had fallen asleep with his head against the couch as he sat on the floor, and Jose laughed softly.

“Pep,” he put a hand on the man’s shoulder and shook lightly. Pep woke with a reluctant noise.

“Let’s get you to bed properly.” He murmured, a little off kilter from the alcohol. He was way too old for this. Pep stood shakily, helped up by Jose. Even in the dark, Pep’s eyes were open and expressive. Jose swallowed, throat suddenly dry.

(Another big rule was not getting romantically or physically involved with poets, it only invites trouble.)

Pep collapsed onto his mattress happily. “You should stay. Here.” He gestured grandly at his tiny flat. “You’re here all of the time.”

“It’s too small, no?” he leant into the doorframe, unable to look away from him now that Pep was drunkenly struggling to remove his too-warm sweater, because Jose very much sought to invite that sort of trouble. Pep was just looking at him, as if Jose was a particularly challenging puzzle.

“I do not mind it, the closeness.” Pep undid his belt with a click. Jose was grateful it was dark, because all his wrinkled clothing felt tight all at once from staring at the curls of hair on the poet’s chest and abdomen.

“I have an iron, somewhere,” Pep continued slowly. “You might as well borrow something for bed.”

Jose shook his head. “I’ll manage. We’ll get breakfast tomorrow and I’ll continue working on the English for _A Few Things Explained_ and _How Spain Was_.”

Pep waved him off. “Always work.” His voice was gentler than when he usually ribbed Jose for it.

“It’s all I do, really.” Jose confessed softly. Historically, Pep wouldn’t remember. “I am always here because there is nothing at home.”

“What did you do before me?” It was an innocent enough question, though Jose’s eyes clenched shut instinctively, brain filling with brief but unwanted memories of his last poet. Ten years, left Jose for a woman. Getting fired, more than twice, for poor work.

“I don’t remember.” He lied simply, and gave Pep a last smile in the darkness. “Sleep well.”

Pep looked like he was going to say something, but Jose walked away before he got a chance to hear it.

In the small living room, he stripped to his boxers and undershirt and nestled into the soft afghan, heart pounding too quickly for sleep.

**()**

In the morning, two notes. He put on his glasses.

“No food. will be back before you wake with fruit”

 _“I dreamed that I died: that I felt the cold close to me;_  
_and all that was left of my life was contained in your presence:_  
_your mouth was the daylight and dark of my world,_  
_your skin, the republic I shaped for myself with my kisses.”_

As much as Jose would joke otherwise, Pep wasn’t always a bastard.

Sometime between caffeinating Pep to the point a cocaine addict would be envious when deadlines were fast approaching and letting him completely crash afterwards; to watching football matches with him on the weekends, to hotly contested debates that kind of left both men simultaneously pissed off and triumphant; to just peacefully coexisting in a room together, to lines of poetry that could make even Ferguson’s breath catch in his throat, Jose fell in love.

Pep returned with a grocery bag as promised.

“I don’t think I’ll work today, I didn’t get much sleep.”

Jose looked up from the note at last, a needy yawning in his heart.

“That makes two of us.” He stood slowly, growing self-conscious of his near-nakedness. “Pass me my shirt, would you?”

Pep dutifully tossed it at him. “This is getting washed. You’ll look lewd putting this back on.”

“Fine, fine. Wearing another man’s clothing isn’t lewd, then?”

Pep looked at him with an intensity that raised the hairs on Jose’s arms. “In a different way.” He grinned at last. “Go on, I’ll cook. Shower if you’d like.”

A shower sounded heavenly. He left the door open a little bit, maybe a little too hopefully.

Pep’s eyes darkened visibly when Jose walked to the dresser looking for clothing wearing just the towel, droplets of water clinging to his chest hair and the trail of hair leading to just under the towel. Pep exhaled slowly and looked away.

**()**

Jose had been sent to Prague by Ferguson for a graduate student conference.

 He had promised to call Pep when he landed, and like the hopeless man he was, his door had barely shut before he was dialing. It was late and his back was sore from sitting for so long to the point where even the incredibly uncomfortable hotel beds felt like a godsend.

 When Pep answered the phone, he immediately started on his ideas. Pep had such a soft, soothing voice even when he was speaking at Mach 3, Jose felt himself drifting slowly.

“—but the point isn’t the physical yet asexual romance of men but of the field, the rush, the spectators. It’s voyeurism, no?” Jose imagined him scratching notes on the nearest piece of paper he could find, which was probably a takeout menu.

Jose’s tired eyes closed only for a moment. His cell dropped against the stiff hotel pillows. Pep kept talking, unaware.

“Jose?” he checked to see if the call was dropped, growing irritated. “ _Jose._ You fucker. Answer me _._ ”

When Jose woke up, fully dressed in what he wore on the plane and his phone left uncharged overnight, he groaned. There were two texts from Pep.

“JOSE.”

“You’re lucky I don’t hate working with you.”

Jose wasn’t sure why he felt threatened. He needed to shower and get ready for this panel he was leading on helping PhD students learn how to properly translate a work— _a total waste of his time_ \-- and sent back a cheeky response.

“Te adoro, Josep.” He added a heart emoji for good measure knowing Pep would be a little disgusted and was a little too pleased with himself.

The few notes he managed to take the night before were garbage. He would call back after the pointless conference. Fucking graduate students. He hoped he had been more self-aware when he was in school.

A rather handsome young man who paid Jose riveting attention in the front row cornered him after the panel.

“I really love your work. Would you like to grab a drink?” His light eyes were earnest, bold.

Another time, Jose probably would have taken him up on the offer. He liked meaningless sex, and students were generally eager and easy to please. The man had thick, light hair. Jose was much more into one man’s hairlessness nowadays.

“I have a flight to catch, regrettably.” He lied smoothly. “Best of luck in your semester.”

**()**

“English isn’t poetic.” Pep said, leafing through Jose’s English dictionary and thesaurus. Jose looked up from the top of his rimmed glasses.

“I completely disagree. Have you ever looked over my English translations?”

Pep shook his head, looking sheepish. “I don’t speak it well enough to be able read poetry.”

Jose rifled in his briefcase for his latest drafts of _Evening LX._ He made room for Pep on the couch and gestured for him to sit. Pep took the sheet of paper and studied it.

“English isn’t a romance language, this is true. It brings about special difficulties with the language, because exact and equivalent words in Spanish and Catalan sound completely different.” He took his pen and underlined Pep’s words.

_A ti te hiere aquel que quiso hacerme daño._

“Your words,” Jose said. “Would directly translate in English to ‘You hurt the one who wanted to hurt me.’” He watched Pep crinkle his nose in disgust and laughed.

“Not poetic, and really, not _worthy_ of being attributed to your name. So, I try to make the English beautiful in the spirit of your writing, in the spirit of the poem itself. And of course, beauty for the sake of it.” Tapping the pen against the line of poetry across from Pep’s, Jose read aloud in English.

_Whoever intends me harm, lets your blood, too._

Pep scratched his chin and smiled. “You should have been a poet, Jose. You’re wasted in editing.”

Jose rolled his eyes and took the paper back. “You’re the one who makes me any good, I’ll keep on doing my job if you do yours.”

Still, he couldn’t help but grin at the compliment.

Pep, admittedly, was not very good at directly expressing his feelings. He stood and kissed Jose softly on the corner of his mouth. “Thank you. For enlightening me. You’ve changed my mind about English.” He said sincerely, and walked into the bedroom. Jose’s heart stuttered pathetically in his chest and wished he could reach out and ask to maybe, just maybe to do that again.

Pep was asleep when Jose entered with reheated leftovers, since Pep most certainly hadn’t eaten all day. Pep blinked awake—he had squeaky floorboards and he was a light sleeper-- and rest his head on Jose’s shoulder, pressed together from thigh to shoulder.

Jose kissed his temple, emboldened by Pep’s move. Pep smiled.

“We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Jose blinked. “I assumed so.”

At the very least, Pep stopped being just his client the moment Jose realized he considered the dingy little apartment to be more of his home than his own flat: the time he was filled with absurd amounts of pride when Pep’s first published work sat high on the bestseller list, and when his second and third works joined it. And of course, when he fell in love with both the poet and the man.

**()**

Pep couldn’t remember what he did before Jose either.

He used to hate being crowded in his workroom. Being crowded in general. He was a solitary man, and he always had been.

Jose slotted into his couch like he was always meant to be there, and Pep found himself increasingly desperate for his company the rare times he wasn’t. Like the weekends minus the two hours of football. Like at night.

Especially at night. Pep’s mattress—an old thing, worn and soft, shoved carelessly against the wall on his floor. Just barely big enough for one person to stretch out, but Pep imagined that sharing it with Jose would be so lovely in the winter, when his flat was cold.

He took himself in hand many times thinking about Jose even before he realized he felt so strongly about him. There was a magnetism there, an animal one, that drew Pep to everything Jose. It was all-consuming. This must be what having a muse felt like.

Jose never questioned where Pep’s inspiration came from. Pep was grateful for it. He didn’t question it when some of the only poetry Pep could churn out was about sex, about love, about loss.

Pep wrote _Condiciones_ after Jose fell asleep on his couch, fully clothed and bespectacled. The picture of a workaholic. He carefully removed the readers and pulled the old afghan over him. Jose woke slowly and smiled at Pep openly, in the carefree way one does when they wake.

“Do you mind if I take your bed?” Jose asked quietly. Pep shook his head. “I insist. I’m going to work through the night.”

Jose nodded and wrapped the afghan around his shoulders and headed towards the floor mattress. The room felt colder, somehow, without him there.

 _... Condemned to self-love,_  
_I loved the exterior life of a hypocrite_  
_hiding the depths of the love_  
_my defects had brought down upon my head._  
_I keep on being happy,_  
_disclosing to nobody_  
_my ambiguous malady:_  
_the grief I endure for self-love,_  
_who was never so loved in return._

After all, what was the point of having a gift for words if you couldn’t occasionally indulge your melodramatic self-pity?

**()**

They fall into bed together for the first time on an otherwise perfectly normal evening.

Jose was lounging on Pep’s worn old sofa, his usual spot to sit when he was translating Pep’s Catalan and Spanish to Portuguese. (He preferred his own apartment for translating to French and English. It took substantially more effort, which required absolute concentration, of which Jose didn’t have with Pep was around.)

“Why do you always insist on wearing business formal to my house after hours?” Pep asked from his desk. He was on his second glass of port, which meant it was around the time when Pep should be breaking for the night. Surprisingly, his alcohol tolerance was quite low.

“This is business casual. I don’t want fashion advice from a man who wears cashmere like it’s going out of style. Besides, I took off my jacket and shoes at the door, I’m hardly the picture of decorum.”

Pep stood up and grinned lazily, fixing his dark eyes on the Portuguese man.

“But not your tie.”

“What’s wrong with me wearing my tie?” He said, indignant, and stood to file his latest markings and edits in his own section of folders on the other side of Pep’s substantial wall of books. He was neatly organized to the point of obsessiveness.

Pep was behind him in a moment, and Jose could feel the warm, tobacco-heavy breath on the back of his neck. He turned around slowly and Pep looked solemn, but his eyes were playful.

“You’re being a poor houseguest.”

“I practically live here.”

“Why don’t you?” Pep’s steady hands deftly untied the knot at his neck and slid the tie through the collar with a satisfying stripping sound.

“I have a life outside of you.” Their lips were so close to touching that speaking vibrated the air around them. Pep smirked, an unfairly attractive look for him. It was always a give and take, with them. Distant and sensual at once. Pep’s calculated control even in his seduction to Jose’s headstrong.

“Oh I’m sure.” A finger flicked open Jose’s top button, lips following the exposed skin. Jose’s eyes briefly fluttered shut and he let out a deep exhale, fingers hooking in the belt loops of Pep’s jeans, pulling him closer. Their lips met and the tobacco and port mixed on Pep’s tongue was delicious, and Jose mentally kicked himself for letting the teasing go as long as it had. This was much better.

Pep made short work of the white shirt and disposed of it like the tie, and laughed out loud when Jose moved to pick it up so at the very least it wouldn’t wrinkle. Pep had lied about owning an iron.

“Come to bed with me already, Jose.”

_Come together like the sheets and bury me._

Jose’s hands and mouth were reverent, earnest and Pep’s body was his altar.

 _You plant in my flesh the darkening stars that rise in my song_.

Pep’s mind slowed to _Jose_ , to _please_ , to _now_.

Jose’s lips whispered _yes,_ _I’m—_

 _His breathing a gallop, his step is a kiss_  
_Kingdoms of lethargy rise in their pallor_  
_Like a boxer’s exhaustion_  
_Dumbly dispelling a ghost with our breathing_

**()**

Jose almost broke his ankle when he stormed through Pep’s—his?—door. An indignant mew came from the floor and Jose looked up at his far-too-innocent looking boyfriend and frowned.

“You’re joking.”

“Her name is Catalunya and she is perfect.”

The grey lump, _Catalunya_ , jumped on a dining chair and looked at Jose through bright green eyes. She didn’t look impressed. Jose sighed and rubbed his temples.

“ _Lovely_.” He toed off his shoes and collapsed on the couch, rubbing his eyes. “When did you unilaterally decide we needed a cat?”

“Technically, you still don’t live here,” Pep joined Jose on the couch and pressed a kiss to his temple. He hadn’t trimmed his beard in a few days and the stubble lightly scratched against him. Jose liked how unkempt it looked.

Jose wrapped his arms around Pep’s middle and looked up at him pathetically.

“Only a technicality. I can’t move until I’m done with my lease next month.” He leant in for a proper kiss, which was immediately interrupted with a pounce from the kitten. Pep happily stroked between her ears, leaving Jose bereft and annoyed.

 _How cunningly a cat sleeps,_  
_sleeps in its whole heft and its paws,_  
_sleeps with its cruel claws_  
_and predatory blood,_  
_sleeps with all its rings_  
_blazing in circles_  
_to shape the geology_  
_of its sand colored tail_ …

**()**


End file.
